Muxlim’s virtual world is a welcome addition
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By now, many of you must have heard about Muxlim‘s plans to build a virtual world for the 1.4 billion Muslim inhabitants of this planet. Dubbed as not unlike the Second Life, the virtual world is set for a launch by mid-December. There is lot of excitement as we’ll be able to have an Islamic environment in our ‘region and planet’. The liberty of wearing Hijab and offering prayers sounds really interesting.
Critics, or Westerners to be more precise, are nitpicking the whole idea. They think that a pure Islamic virtual world can create rifts between the communities, among other things. Butcher had to close comments for his post at TechCrunch as the commenters were going nuts.
There is a huge advertising potential, given the population of the ‘Islamic World’ and Muxlim folks are positive that they’ll lure giants like Coca-Cola. As far as the success of the venture is concerned, we have to keep our fingers crossed. There is a big niche market and we can expect more such ventures if this one is successful.
Coming back to the controversy aspect, there is no harm in having a virtual world for Muslims. The idea of community, religion or ethnic based virtual worlds may border on controversy but we shouldn’t impose any restrictions. There is an open playing field for everyone and faith-based virtual worlds can be created by anyone. There is a need to get rid of this tunnel vision, especially when it comes to Islam.
8:55 pm
Hundred of Pakistani professionals are working around the world. Isn’t it nice to initiate some open source project for computerisation of any of our country system..e.g. Judicial System..?
10:02 pm
Noooon…. huh?
Muxlim seemed like an interesting idea until I started to play with it and found that it got confusing really fast..
I welcome their initiative though, a second life targeting Muslims is a good idea…
8:28 am
While its ok to think about a virtual world which ensures that certain immoral activities of other virtual environments are not prevalent there… but how exactly would wearing virtual hijab or offering virtual prayers make this an compelling environment?
Before you bring out the pitchforks hear me out – there’s a reason or type of people which are attracted to second life… anyone longing escapism from their real-world social status, or otherwise people hoping to play out their wildest imaginations somewhere.
I dont see any real incentive for people to be active visitors to this world…. maybe the idea that real-life in existing muslim communities is so difficult that they’d want to build a virtual “ideal” muslim state. That could be a compelling reason.
Otherwise – if the virtual world promises to let you do exactly what you do anyway in the real-world wihtout any change in social status then I dont think any community will form there.
The question for communities is why would people invest the time to go somewhere everyday?